As more merchants are adopting of point-of-sale terminals that are capable of conducting transactions with mobile devices, consumers are more and more likely to replace their physical wallets with digital wallet applications running on their mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones). Transactions with digital wallet applications running on a mobile device may be contactless, for example, using near field communication (NFC) capabilities of the mobile device.
Contactless payment transactions provide significant convenience to consumers as they allow consumers to make purchases more quickly and conveniently than in a contact-based environment. In a contactless payment transaction, a consumer brings a contactless enabled consumer portable payment device (CPPD) such as a contactless smart card or a mobile phone in close proximity with an acceptance terminal. Information such as payment credentials is exchanged between the contactless CPPD and the acceptance terminal in a wireless manner to carry out the payment transaction without requiring direct physical contact between the contactless CPPD and the acceptance terminal. In some cases, the contactless CPPD and the acceptance terminal are not collocated, but may rather be in different locations, for example, in different cities or countries. In such a case the information is transmitted between the contactless CPPD and the acceptance terminal via, for example, the Internet.
It is often required by various standards or compliance authorities that a mobile device being employed as a contactless CPPD contains a secure element. Such a secure element is not unlike a secure integrated circuit used in conventional CPPDs, such as secure integrated circuit credit cards. The secure elements which are in communication with the mobile devices typically provide a secure memory and secure processor which are separate from the mobile device memory and processor and can only be accessed by trusted applications, often only after a specified personal identification number (PIN) has been correctly entered. The mobile devices in which such secure elements are disposed or embedded are often equipped with proximity communications interfaces such as, for example, near field communications (NFC).
It is in this secure memory that information, such as payment credentials, may be stored. In some cases, the provisioning of such payment credentials to the secure memory of the mobile device may be via over-the-air (OTA) communications methods originating from a trusted service manager (TSM). Such TSMs are typically operated from secure data centers such that the process meets security standards imposed by relevant standards or compliance authorities.
Provisioning digital wallet applications on mobile devices can be a cumbersome task. For example, in order to provision a mobile device with the credentials to conduct contactless transactions such as contactless payment transactions, users may be required to access a contactless transaction service provider from their mobile device to carry out an OTA provisioning process. The provisioning process may require the user to manually enter user credentials such as account numbers. As most consumers likely have many credential storage instruments such as credit/debit cards from different banks that the user would like to include in the digital wallet application, entering this information for all credential storage instruments of a user can be a time consuming process. Furthermore, the OTA provisioning process may incur undesirable wireless data usage charges for the user.
Embodiments of the invention aim to address these and other problems individually and collectively, at least to some extent.